The Tom Regan Visiting Research Fellowship

In 2000, the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the NC State University Libraries established the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive, which consists of notes, letters, manuscripts and typescripts, books and pamphlets, and audiovisual materials documenting Tom’s work, as well as other material relating to the history of the animal advocacy movement. Since then, the archive has grown into the largest scholarly archive of animal rights collections in North America. In addition to Tom Regan’s papers extending over fifty years and the Culture & Animals Foundation collection from 1985 to 2001, the archive contains pamphlets on animal protection from 1874 to 1951, the records of the Animal Rights Network and the Animal Welfare Institute from 1903 to 2003, the Argus Archives of work from 1937 to 2004, and Wim DeKok’s Animal Rights Collection from 1911 to 2016. In 2022, the archive welcomed material from The Humane Society of the United States and from HSUS VP Bernard Unti.

A selection of items from the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive at NCSU

To encourage scholarly engagement with the Archive and animal rights, CAF and SCRC established an annual fellowship in memory of Tom Regan. The fellowship provides a $4,000 stipend to a qualified applicant for research completed in residence at the SCRC.

Whitney Barlow RoblesIn 2023, historian Whitney Barlow Robles (left: Photo: Katie Lenhart) was chosen as the Tom Regan Research Fellow. She aimed to do research toward her second book, The Collector’s Paradox: Specimens, Species, and Loss, which explores specimen collecting’s contradictory relationship with both preservation and destruction. She investigated the ethics of the history of collecting through the lens of this paradox by examining SCRC holdings of researchers such as Catherine Roberts. She wrote about her experience in the archives in October 2023.

Kat Poje and Joshua Russell

In 2022, CAF and SCRC awarded two fellowships: to Harvard historian of science Kat Poje (left) and anthrozoologist Joshua Russell. You can read about Kat and Joshua’s experiences here and here, respectively.

The first recipient of the Visiting Research Fellowship was Rachel Robison-Greene in 2019 (see below). As a result of her research, Rachel was able to publish her book Edibility and In Vitro Meat: Ethical Considerations.

Due to the pandemic, no fellowships were awarded in 2020 and 2021.

Rachel Robison-Greene

“I am especially eager to use the expansive Animal Rights Archive at NC State to research the twentieth-century side of this story, and I’m honored to be doing so under the aegis of Tom Regan’s legacy.”—Whitney Barlow Robles

“It was a joy to get to know CAF.  The organization was clearly very important to Tom. In my final days in the collection, I looked through the boxes that told the CAF story and was very impressed with all of the people doing such valuable work.”—Rachel Robison-Greene

“I am excited to continue this work and to deepen my analysis moving forward. Again, thank you to the staff at NC State and the board at Culture & Animals Foundation for this tremendous opportunity.”—Joshua Russell